Here's the question that started it all off:

Question: “I’m under the impression that when you’re using falsetto that the cords are not actually touching.”

Sara: They can be.

Tom: You talk to a countertenor who is definitely using falsetto and they’re making enough noise to fill a cathedral!

Sara: Their folds are definitely touching.

Jeremy: Can I just step in here? What we tend to cover in the Singing and the Actor Training is the primary colours. So our primary colour for falsetto is a really hooty, breathy, things-don’t-meet-they’re-just-waving-gently-in-the-breeze thing. But these are on a continuum. In fact if I’ve understood this right, they are on two continuums.

Sara: Absolutely, that’s what we’re saying

Jeremy: They’re on two different continuums. You have a continuum which starts at thick folds [modal or chest voice], and they are vibrating in a particular way. Those folds can get thinner but still vibrate in that particular way. And then you have the other continuum which is falsetto where the folds are vibrating in a different way, and they can get thicker, even though they are vibrating still in that particular way, and those two can overlap. And in fact they can overlap in pitch as well, so you can do the same note in different qualities.

Sara: Yes, absolutely

Jeremy: So you can have a falsetto-type movement with thicker folds that touch

Sara: Yes. And of course it depends on the [vocal fold] closure

Tom: And for me, it’s not how much they touch, but because of thinness and thickness and pressure and all that stuff, what actually changes for me is the phase relationship of the oscillation.

Gillyanne: So it’s the way they vibrate.

Jeremy: And it is also why when we are dealing with students, sometimes they get confused. I had this the day before yesterday. I had a male client in and I said “that’s not falsetto”. He was singing what we would call a light head voice, but not in falsetto, and he was really confused about that because he said “But that’s not strong…”

Gillyanne: “…therefore it must be falsetto…”

Jeremy: “…therefore it must be falsetto”. And I said “no, it’s not a falsetto type sound.”

Sara: We get it in speaking too.

Jeremy: So you can overlap either way.

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Sara then gives a really clear demonstration moving between falsetto, thin folds, thicker folds at the same pitch, thicker folds at a lower pitch, and a breathy version at the lower pitch, then a very low-pitched falsetto. Sara has kindly given us permission to put the sound file of her demonstration onto the Vocal Process website, and as an eZINE reader you are the first to hear it!